What value do we create here? - <AUTHOR> http://www.astatespacetraveler.com/have-you-ever-wondered-what-value-we-create-here/ <comment><USER2> First of all, I disagree with the entire premise of the question. Why does the intelligent have an obligation to dedicate his or her life to the creation of maximal value for society? Sounds like Nietzsche's slave morality to me. Why does the attractive/tall/healthy not have a similar special moral obligation?

Second of all, providing liquidity is very important. Sure, you are only shaving off a few basis points, but multiply that by a few trillion and you are creating serious value. How much value does a silly time-wasting video game provide relative to the efficient allocation of the world's capital?

Finance is an extremely exciting field, where machine learning, econometrics, physics, and just about everything else converge. Imagine a world without car insurance, where startups cannot offer equity, where there are no IPOs. Finance facilitates co-operation, trade, and, yes it is cliche, but world peace. If you are interested, please don't let the media and finger-pointing politicians turn you away from this exciting line of work.

<comment><USER3> Considering how many people in the world are starving, ill, undereducated, and unemployed, I'd say we're doing a piss-poor job of 'efficiently allocating the world's capital'.

<comment><USER4> > Considering how many people in the world are starving, ill, undereducated, > and unemployed, I'd say we're doing a piss-poor job of 'efficiently > allocating the world's capital'.

Considering how many in the world _aren't_ starving, ill, undereducated, and unemployed, I'd say we're doing an utterly frigging amazing job of 'efficiently allocating the world's capital'.

Seriously - the question isn't, "Why are some people poor?" It's, "Why AREN'T some people poor?" Poverty is the natural state of humanity - we evolved from being apes and crawled out of forests, jungles, and caves. The fact that there's any literacy, lifespan over 30 years, immunization from disease, infrastructure, and knowledge is marvelous in and of itself. The rate that those things are growing lately is astounding. Humanity is doing a pretty amazing job lately.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, we've done a pretty amazing job to become so productive. But we've done a terrible job of distributing this among the world's population. It's pretty appalling that with our current levels of productivity there are still so many people whose basic needs are not being met.

I guess it depends what you mean by efficiently allocating capital. What's the end goal? Just to produce as much as we can?

<comment><USER4> > Agreed, we've done a pretty amazing job to become so productive. But we've > done a terrible job of distributing this among the world's population.

The problem isn't distribution - it's a couple of different things.

Forgive me if this seems obvious, but the biggest reason some people are poor is lack of production - by and large, the poorest people aren't producing very many things that their fellow man wants to trade them things for. Even looking at charity as a short term bridge, to be independent and emancipated person you need to produce as much or more than you consume. So, why aren't they producing? That's a heck of a complicated question. I'd say the number one most common reason is bad government, and the number two is time.

Bad government - well, you know how that works. I was just in Cambodia last month - no matter how much you'd like to produce, you're not going to be able to to under Khmer Rogue Agrarian Communism. You need basic free action, liberty, human rights to produce.

Most people agree with that well enough. But they don't necessarily like the second answer - time. It takes time for people to grow into producing and succeeding. The fastest it happens is 1-2 generations, but those are people coming from cultures with high priority on education, industry, and family ties (I'm thinking of Ashkenazi Jewish and Han Chinese as my first examples - people from those cultures regularly go from nothing to fairly wealthy in 1-2 generations). Most more normal cultures, it seems to take 3-5 generations of incremental lessons and improvements to get out of poverty. My great- grandparents were dirt poor - literally had nothing, my grandparents were quite poor, my parents came up poor and moved into middle class, and I've got a shot to break upwards from there.

I think you can help people out with that cycle, but only so much. I mean, the track record of foreign aid is really, really bad. (I can dig up some citations and studies if you don't know about it - but foreign aid has basically failed to end poverty in the countries it was sent to; poverty actually increased in a number of places that got large amounts of aid) I think it really does take 3-5 generations under normal circumstances for people to get into the right mentalities of produce things, consume and save wisely with the money, educate your children, delay gratification, etc, etc. Much of this happens in the home. These lessons take a while to learn.

It's not a consumption problem first - it's a production problem. It's not that there's not enough food to eat - it's that people aren't growing and cooking enough food. If they were, they'd have enough to eat. When we keep giving people food, that doesn't seem to get them into learning how to grow and cook, which is what they need to be emancipated and independent, living, producing, and getting wealthy on their own.

> It's pretty appalling that with our current levels of productivity there are > still so many people whose basic needs are not being met.

First and foremost, I think you've _got_ to be an optimist at how great things are. Flush toilets are a luxury in Cambodia, man. I think it's marvelous that we have so many flush toilets in the world. Seriously, I'm in Hong Kong now, and I'm walking into nice hotels and using the men's room there and just really enjoying the experience. After Cambodia, using a nice bathroom feels like incredible luxury to me.

But I digress - first and foremost, there's the problem of bad government. Bad/corrupt/stifling rule = no progress. So the people of Burma, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba are in trouble until then. You need protections of human rights and liberty, and some sort of sanity about allowing people to produce and keep what they produce. No mass murdering, arrests and tortures, confiscation of property at the whim of some bureaucrat.

And then you need time. Cambodia's rapidly improving since the Vietnamese government overthrew the Khmer Rouge in the early 90's. It was an utter wasteland under the Communists, now it's poor but improving every year. In two more generations (40-50 years, they have kids young there), it'll be fairly prosperous. They'll have flush toilets, they won't have the same traffic accident rate, there'll be more hospitals and infrastructure and clean food and water and medicine. Things will improve. It does take time, though.

Actually, of all the things that improve nations, ironically, it seems like foreign investment into industry does the best. But maybe this is selection bias - industry is only built in stable places, and we already know stability is important. Still, I see a lot of the wealth in Cambodia coming from foreign investment in hotels, hospitals, and other infrastructure that was designed for Western visitors, but is also immense help to the Khmer people. (The hospital is half-price for Khmer, for instance, and those hotel jobs are highly sought after)

> I guess it depends what you mean by efficiently allocating capital. What's > the end goal? Just to produce as much as we can?

Well, it doesn't hurt. Things we produce start out as luxuries and eventually become commodities. There's (slow) internet in Cambodia, which is a result of the people who made hardware and software and networking originally. There's cars in Cambodia. They'll import flush toilets eventually. (You can find them already at luxury places) Medicine that gets invented in the West gets genericized 15 years later, and is available for very little money in developing places at that point. All the knowledge we invent and innovate makes it's way over there. They can and do use modern agricultural techniques. New designs on cars and clothing and manufacturing make the way over to developing places.

Yes, actually, producing as much as we can is a pretty good plan for improving the world. That, and overthrowing bad governments I suppose. Then it just takes time - people need to learn little lessons about producing, saving, delaying gratification, and so on. It takes a little while - we're all of us still just overgrown apes and all - but we're moving forwards at a pretty remarkable pace.

<comment><USER5> > The problem isn't distribution - it's a couple of different things.

I certainly agree that we can't solve this problem by just trying to redistributing existing wealth (i.e. aid). It was never a viable long term solution, and not even as much of a short term one as I would have guessed.

But I stick by the point that we've made amazing strides in productivity, but overall we've not distributed this well. What I really mean by this is, IMO, it would be a better result overall if the world were less productive, but the minimum living standard were higher.

I agree that it's productivity we need to spread, not wealth. The former will bring the latter. But, I think it's fair to say that some parts of the world could afford to spend more of their effort towards facilitating this. Even if that means a drop in overall output, for a while at least.

> Things we produce start out as luxuries and eventually become commodities.

Sure, but the incremental benefits of these items to people tends to get smaller. These could be sacrificed at least until everyone reaches a flatter part of this curve.

This like medicines, sanitation, are not exactly in the same class as, say, an iPod.

> Yes, actually, producing as much as we can is a pretty good plan for > improving the world.

In practice a decent plan, and perhaps even the only practical one given human nature and our political systems. But still not a goal in itself.

<comment><USER4> > What I really mean by this is, IMO, it would be a better result overall if > the world were less productive, but the minimum living standard were higher.

Maybe, but I think it's a bit of a non-sequitor. There's no either/or choice there. Consistently, a place producing a lot equates with a high quality of life. The only places that do better for quality of life are relatively small, extremely homogeneous societies (Okinawa, Switzerland, etc). As a general, large scale strategy, produce more is pretty good. Attempts to produce less and streamline it to where the governor thinks it should go have all ended poorly thus far.

> Sure, but the incremental benefits of these items to people tends to get > smaller. These could be sacrificed at least until everyone reaches a flatter > part of this curve. This like medicines, sanitation, are not exactly in the > same class as, say, an iPod.

Definitely - and this is a choice we already get to make as individuals. You can choose how much you want to consume, invest, and give charitably. It's an individual ethical judgment, and one we must all make and live with.

> In practice a decent plan, and perhaps even the only practical one given > human nature and our political systems. But still not a goal in itself.

Well, I think "produce as much good stuff as we can" is a good goal in itself, but improving the baseline of the whole world is good too. Actually, I think they're complimentary goals, and not really in opposition with each other at all. Working to build as much good stuff as possible in the world makes it easier to make more good stuff cheaper - I don't think there's any natural antagonism or choice between producing more and improving the baseline for the rest of the world. In fact, I'm pretty sure they're complimentary goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, I'm quite surprised and honored to come home and see that my post got so many votes.

Having read through most comments below, I want to make a few points:

1\. I am not implying a moral obligation to do some jobs over others. Nor am I suggesting a framework to judge the value of some jobs over others. If I had known this was going to be read by so many people, I would have spent more time making sure my message was communicated more clearly. I'm sorry for giving some people the wrong idea.

2\. My point is actually very simple and I expect the vast majority of Hacker News readers already get it: for people considering what jobs to do, especially young college students, be wary of focusing on the value of fun and money. Fun and money can be very distracting when you are young and haven't experienced so much freedom before. However, the decisions you make when you are young can have consequences for the trajectory of your whole life. Always think about what will give you long-term and enduring happiness and satisfaction. Often, I think long-term happiness is connected with a cause greater than your own immediate satisfaction. Hence the consideration of value creation.

It's obvious advice, but I hoped my story would make it more digestible for college students.

</comment><comment><USER6> Not very well written. The point is unclear... I had to read xxzz's comment to really figure out what he meant (probably because to me as to xxzz, "increasing the liquidity of the secondary bonds market" doesn't sound like "worthless value" at all, so the main point of the article contradicts my sense of values).

I think the question "How do we add value?" is important, but only in the sense that it can help you figure out what are the key activities of the business, that you should be involved in. It can help focus you, basically.

<comment><USER7> This is exactly what I was thinking as I read the article. I think of it as a sort of mantra that can be applied in a variety of directions, whether you're a startup founder, an early-stage employee, an employee of a larger organization, or just a human being trying to make the most of your time.

i.e., "Am I doing something worthwhile?" -- which could mean different things depending on the context, the goals or principles of the person, or what have you. I guess it depends on how you define "value" :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The first two comments on the site provide a great insight into the question.

The first commenter posts to try and explain what value is being created.

 _Efficient markets - > lower transaction costs -> greater access to the markets by everyone. Why is that un-noble? Isn't Art.sy doing the same thing? _

All true. Then Carter responds agreeing and writes a bit about what Art.sy is doing.

 _Art.sy is not saving the world, but our goal is to create a fundamental change in the way art is bought, sold, and appreciated. We envision a dramatically different future where artists can pursue their passions more sustainable, and where everyone else will be more inspired by original art._

The first commenter isn't wrong about why creating liquidity has value, he just hasn't gone far enough. So there's greater access to the markets by everyone. What good does that do? There are several more steps before getting eventually to the production of things that have real value.

Art.sy does the same thing, but hasn't lost sight of the end goal. The reason for providing a more efficient and liquid market is so that more artists can create more original art.

<comment><USER9> The first commenter was me. The financial markets are horizontal in the goals they serve. Drawing connections to specific utility can be done, but doesn't have to be done. For example:

Efficient markets -> lower transaction costs -> greater access to the markets by everyone -> farmer sells a futures contract to lock in price and hedge risk -> farmer uses capital to buy equipment -> farmer grows more crops

Your definition of utility is valid, but your desire to draw direct connections between end game utility is misplaced because there are millions of connections that can be drawn. Each market participant interacts with the markets according to their own definition of what is and is not important to them. You seek to define value for every human using financial markets in the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [Long time lurker. Please forgive me for length]

I think the most obvious creation of value comes from my view of how video games increase the value of technology. Video games tax the underlying hardware and software technology to its limits causing those underlying systems to shift towards greater utility under market pressure.

If value is seen by its utility, then I would say that it is inevitably the result of market pressure to have a better product. Where money is concerned, profit pushes improvement. This is just part of the underlying structure the economy.

If you are asking about social incentives, it is a personal one for the programmer. He feels fulfilled writing the program. Is it not the same self- fulfillment that his manager was seeking- the idea of meeting his ideal self's human potential? It may not be the same goal, but the main crux of the argument is in self-fulfillment.

But all of that is off-topic considering the headline.

If you are looking for an argument that would give merit that this job "creates value," I would say that it feeds the families of those who work at that company by making it more sustainably profitable.

I'd weasel my way out of answering the question directly. I would counter that you can ask the same thing about what value marketing gives. Sure the companies have useful products, but what does all that money spent on image branding and market testing product color and style pallets give? Hell, even the TV programming they place it against can be absolutely vapid and lacking in any moral or mental fortitude.

But back to my off-topic rant up above. When the general economy hires talent, we generally view that the use of such talent not only increases the talent pool by demand but also the training quality of future professionals by the increased use of such training facilities (universities, researchers, hardware, market). Relying on only measuring directly viewable metrics is a nice and dandy, but the big picture approach (although based on ideals and doesn't correlate 1 to 1 in reality) is a general notion that is hard to argue against.

tl;dr The more you use a resource the more it improves (towards efficiency). This includes talent.

<comment><USER11> _Long time lurker. Please forgive me for length_

What a thing to say with _that_ username :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> He all but said he create the basis of yet another High Frequency Trading firm.

I had an interview with one in the past and while the models that they used were fascinating and I could get lost in them forever driven by pure mathematical interest - it seems unbalancing.

While HFT does provide liquidity and the ability to instantly make a market, it also makes companies and trades look more liquid than they are. More than half of the stock exchange's trades are made by high frequency traders.

There are ups and downs and each situation should be weighed individually.

Overall, I'd say the epiphany that the author had is sadly something that many people miss. We then turn around and we wonder why the world is such a bad and dangerous place.

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe not on-topic considering all the other comments, but by the time I was finished with the first paragraph I could only think how far that is from my "ultimate dream job".

Actually, and considering value, I guess my ultimate dream job was building stuff that provided no value whatsoever but fun for me (and others as an added bonus).

I'm starting to find too frequently that stuff that provide value actually provide no value at all. Especially on the business software side of things, the idea is usually to ease the lives of the users but in reality, users hate whatever is thrown at them, and with good reason, it usually solves them an existing problem by creating two new ones.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't get it. How is arbitrage supposed to increase liquidity, if it is in practice increasing the cost of transaction? Isn't the middleman increasing the friction in the system?

<comment><USER15> When something is illiquid due to insufficient buyers and sellers, the bid and ask spread is large. A big discount is needed to motivate people to buy it. E.g. you ask for $100 to sell your lawn mower because that's what every seller asking for. People only bid $60 to buy a lawn mower because they know it's difficult to resell it. The spread is $40. Now from time to time, a few buyers would get desperate and buy at $100; likewise a few sellers would sell at $60.

Someone then comes in and says the spread is crazy. He offers to bid to buy at $70 and to ask to sell at $90. The few desperate sellers of course would sell to him at $70 instead of $60. And the few desperate buyers would buy from him at $90. He narrows the spread from $40 to $20, and makes $20 in between. He basically increases the buyer and seller pools by adding himself to them, thus increased the liquidity of the lawn mower secondary market.

The risk to the arbitrager is that he guesses the amount of potential buyers or sellers wrong and set the wrong narrower bid and ask prices. E.g. he could buy a lot of lawn mowers at $70, but there are much fewer buyers willing to buy at $90. He would have to reduce his offer price to $85, $80, $75, $65, or $60 to really get the buyers going. As you can see his profit margin erodes and eventually turns into a loss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of Richard Hamming's saying: "What important problems are you working on?"

Very good read - "You and your research" <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html>

</comment><comment><USER16> In a similar spirit to the article's question I've recently switched the emphasis of my economic thinking from, "How can I make money?" to "Are there any real-world problems I encounter frequently, or know that others are experiencing, that I think _I_ can solve, and make money while doing it?"</comment>


[pdf] an example of incorrect behaviour from a senior mathematician - <AUTHOR> http://www.ihes.fr/~lafforgue/math/NoriMotivesInformation.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> We often hear about that kind of thing happening, but it is rare to see a specific example going into details and making specific accusations towards a specific person.</comment>


How to Lose 50% of Your Business Overnight from a Series of Coincidences - <AUTHOR> https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/transparency-report-30/ <comment><USER2> The actual content that the title relates to is here:

[https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/transparency- report-30/#3](https://www.codeinwp.com/blog/transparency-report-30/#3)

I was wondering at first how the title could possibly be relevant. It is, it's just not what they lead with, which perhaps annoyed me more than it should.

But it really did annoy me a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> :( too late now, let me edit the article and add a short TOC, hope this will help.</comment></comment>


How to Reset Your Windows Password  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newsflap.com/2012/02/13/reset-windows-password/

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure the people on HN know how to reset a password, or at least google how to do so without this blogspam. Keep this stuff somewhere else.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok, will do care about this..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> thank you ,,,

this is smart, really smart :D</comment>


Ask HN: How do you backup your GSuite account data? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Spanning

[https://spanning.com/products/google-apps- backup/](https://spanning.com/products/google-apps-backup/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I use Google Takeout for my private Gmail, drive etc.

It's not perfect, as there is no way to restore from that backup. But if you lose everything, or lose access, at least you have your Google Docs converted to Word Format etc., it's better than nothing.</comment>


AI Podcast: Elon Musk on Tesla Autopilot [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEv99vxKjVI <comment><USER2> Full self driving by next year and yet accidents caused by autopilot are still common. Tesla says that you should keep your hands on the wheel at all times and stay vigilant, but Musk appears on TV demoing autopilot with his hands off the wheel and retweets videos of others doing the same. Three people have died using autopilot, 2 when their cars drove underneath a truck that the radar failed to pickup, and the Apple engineer who drove his car into a guardrail while under the influence of autopilot.

Telsa is going to continue pumping their technology until the investor day coming up on April 19 because they desperately need a capital raise. They announced closing stores, layoffs, price cuts, and the short-lived 35,000 model 3 because cash is tight and demand was way down in Q1. Q2 is looking like more of the same.

The worst part of this whole thing to me is Musk's blatant disregard for human life to protect the value of his company. 3 people have died because of autopilot and pumping this unfinished technology will lead to more deaths.

[https://twitter.com/shabudibudi/status/1116514629268705280](https://twitter.com/shabudibudi/status/1116514629268705280)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWTMnnECBSo&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWTMnnECBSo&feature=youtu.be)

[https://streamable.com/kpugc](https://streamable.com/kpugc)

[https://twitter.com/NetflixAndLamp/status/111452700974343782...](https://twitter.com/NetflixAndLamp/status/1114527009743437824)

<comment><USER3> In 2017, the USA had 37,133 motor vehicle fatalities, at a rate of 11.6 per billion vehicle miles driven.

I'm having difficulty finding a recent figure for how many miles Tesla autopilot has driven, but they reached over 1.2 billion by July last year.

3 deaths is 3 too many, of course, but it's also 10.9 less than one should expect for 1.2 billion miles driven.

<comment><USER4> The number of Tesla-related deaths is much higher than Tesla reports.[1] At least 4 in California, at least 11 worldwide. That article points out how low the death rate for large luxury cars is, too. Tesla is at about 4x the death rate for the luxury car industry.

[1] [https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver- fatality-r...](https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality- rate-is-more-than-triple-that-of-luxury-cars-and-likely-even- higher-433670ddde17)

<comment><USER5> The author of the article admits that his fund is short TSLA. I don't know why I would believe his data.

<comment><USER6> Elon Musk is long TSLA so we shouldn't believe him either.

<comment><USER7> I would argue someone in a short position has more incentive to produce negative news than someone in a long position does to produce positive news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm skeptical of Musk's claim that Teslas are an "appreciating asset". That doesn't make sense in the automotive world, and it's claims like this that make him lose credibility.

<comment><USER9> It is pretty disingenuous on his part. The small set of cars whose selling price does appreciate satisfy a set of requirements which the Tesla doesn't.

1\. Discontinued / Very few produced -> Tesla is ramping up production 2\. Iconic design -> Teslas do not have stand out look and the same design language is being used for other Tesla vehicles too. 3\. Movie / cult classic -> Tesla does not have its 'Back to the Future' or 'Fast and the Furious'. 4\. Unique features not present in other cars-> Tesla doesn't necessarily have any

Lastly, tablet and screen based designs are ones that age the worst. So, Tesla is at a disadvantage there.

The car collector's market is completely at odds with what Tesla offers. Tesla lovers are high technology folk, who always want the latest and the greatest. They do not appreciate dated designs. Car collectors are the ones most averse to electric cars (as of now).

I think Teslas will hold their price better than other brands, but they certainly won't appreciate. (may be the original roadster, because they made so few of them)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Autopilot drives far safer than I do, my mind wanders on a 1 hour commute. I know the gaps, on 101 where they just moved the lanes and used stickers for markers, autopilot doesn't handle it well. But I feel WAY safer with it on. It's pretty amazing, and it's light-years better than other car manufacturers' offerings. Try the Volvo self driving and then compare, that thing tried to kill me multiple times in a single weekend drive.

<comment><USER11> Point taken: the safety of such systems should be compared to how people actually drive, not as if everyone was driving with all due attention.

The most important concern is whether other people are safer when you are using autopilot than when you are not. Part of that calculation is how bad the accidents are when they happen.

There is also the question of whether safety overall would be better with a combination of lesser technologies, such as lane departure warning and automated emergency braking, than either full autopilot or unassisted manual driving.

Every manufacturer should be evaluated in the same way, and if Tesla is currently the best, then congratulations to them, but that does not mean autopilot is good enough yet, and what we need right now is more data objectively evaluated, not Musk's tendentious claims.

<comment><USER10> Driving with autopilot every day, I bet we are 5-10 years off the full self driving panacea that Musk is selling, but I don't care. The car is blazing fast, safer than I am on my daily commute, and I don't feel the pang of regret from hitting a gas pump.

I don't buy into Musk's bluster blindly, but he does accomplish most of what he says he will... just not on the time scale he promised. Seems fine to me though, I like what he promised and honestly I don't care if my car appreciates, the automatic braking videos sold me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Softball interview.

Musk is still fixated on "What is a car" and "What is not a car". (At [28:12]). Teslas keep hitting things that are "not a car", yet clearly aren't driveable road. Musk doesn't have to evade that issue because the interviewer never brings it up.

Actual paper.[1] Which is actually an analysis of the data from [2].

[1] [https://hcai.mit.edu/tesla-autopilot-human- side.pdf](https://hcai.mit.edu/tesla-autopilot-human-side.pdf)

[2] [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.06976.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.06976.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> I smell only fear here. I am not sure how many people have tried tesla autopilot, I have owned model 3 for a year and the rate of improvement, features on AP is crazy. I thought hackernews is a place where you can discuss about the technology but here it seems just blatant bias and no thought full conversation.

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone who's done anything sufficiently advanced with computer vision, AI, and cars knows that Musk is full of shit. The things he is promising are at least a decade away. Not 1 year. To put it another way, we're in "staging." We haven't hit production yet. If there's ever enough Tesla's on the road, you're going to start seeing a lot of problems with Tesla's "autopilot." Honestly the cars are fantastic enough without people overstating what autopilot can do.

Furthermore he's been funny with his companies' finances. Between Tesla, Solar City (remember when Tesla bought Solar City, because I do), and the fact that SpaceX needed NASA to bail them out with the falcon heavy should tell you all you need to know about how solid his companies' finances are. Tesla as a company, the forefront of Musk's empire (arguably), is showing signs of business turbulence. Layoffs, benefit slashing, etc.

Now, I don't think he's really tried to scam to anyone, sincerely. He's a businessman who's bit off a bit more than he can chew in the science department in my opinion.

<comment><USER14> > Anyone who's done anything sufficiently advanced with computer vision, AI, > and cars knows that Musk is full of shit. The things he is promising are at > least a decade away.

Citation needed.

<comment><USER15> I would like to know the name of the secret genius working at autopilot who knows something the rest of the self-driving industry doesn't.

If Tesla does well with HW3 they'll be able to get Autopilot into 'flashy demo' territory in the not-too-distant-future and that will have the Tesla fans thumping their chests for years to come before it dawns on them that there is actually is a massive gap between going a few miles in traffic and pulling off a couple fancy maneuvers along the way, and a car that can navigate a city safely without a human driver. Nobody knows how wide that gap actually is.

Progress in free-range robotics is inverse exponential, and by that I mean that to drive the error rate down by an order of magnitude, you need to do way more work than was needed to achieve the previous order of magnitude.

We can come back to this in 7 years or so and re-examine just how far off Tesla may be from 'The Tesla Network'. Although I suppose the Tesla Network can just be renting somebody else's Tesla for an afternoon, FSD not necessary, and in that case, any day, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Musk sounding confident about their self driving as usual.

>I'll be shocked if it's not next year at the latest that having having a human intervene will decrease safety (22:32)

Like how we got rid of elevator operators because automatic is safer.

>with a full self-driving car computer the rate of improvement is exponential (24:26)

>Tesla is vastly ahead of everyone (30:11)

<comment><USER4> _I 'll be shocked if it's not next year at the latest that having having a human intervene will decrease safety (22:32)_

For certain interpretations of "intervene", that's true now. See this video of a Tesla hitting a construction barrier.[1] This is a dashcam view from a car behind the Tesla. At 00:21, it's too early for the vehicle to start turning, and at 00:22, the vehicle has already hit the barrier. The driver has to detect the failure and _then_ take over. Much of the driver's allowed reaction time is taken up by having to wait until it's almost too late. Control handoff inherently implies a slower reaction time than manual driving.

(Not noticing the lane change warning and orange construction 45MPH speed limit sign back at 00:05 didn't help, either.)

This is the problem with shared control, and why Waymo rejected it early on.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ml6sjk_8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ml6sjk_8c)

<comment><USER17> That looked bad. It kept inside the lane right up to the moment when it hit the barrier and the way it stayed perfectly in the center of the lane really makes it look like it was on autopilot.

(By the way, the driver with the dashcam is driving terribly.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "The rate of improvement is exponential" \- Elon Musk on the state of improvement in self driving during this conversation.

This is literally the opposite of what is true.

The rate of improvement has slowed down as the low hanging problems have been addressed. Everyone has pushed their timelines out.

It's pretty bad that a research scientist at MIT didn't call him out on this. What's the point in someone who works in the field conducting interviews if he doesn't question the interviewee.

</comment><comment><USER19> The thing that Elon is doing is called _lying_.

[https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13341100/tesla-self- driv...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13341100/tesla-self-driving- autonomous-road-trip-la-nyc)

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768?s=21](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768?s=21)

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/888053175155949572?s=21](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/888053175155949572?s=21)

And so on...

</comment><comment><USER20> QOTD: "What's outside the simulation?"

<comment><USER21> If Elon would be the lucky ones along with Yudkowsky, Ruy etc.. to stand near the AI in the box then I guess his question would be answered</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Examples of Django based applications - <AUTHOR>

Could you suggest an examples of Django based applications which are well designed from architectural point of view? <comment><USER2> <http://github.com/jbalogh/zamboni> would probably be a good start, and <http://pinaxproject.com/> another.

</comment><comment><USER3> How can you judge the architectural design of a Django project just by looking at a site's interface? Do you mean clean URLs? Or are you asking for open source projects, like @madhouse referred to, which were built well?

Both of my projects: <http://www.littleheroes.com> and <http://www.repustate.com> are Django projects and in my biased opinion, they're laid out well under the hood.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking for open source projects with proper structure, modularity and code design, UI design is not interesting. Thank you for examples.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> CC Network - <https://creativecommons.net> \- <http://code.creativecommons.org/viewgit/commoner.git>

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://rachaelrayshow.com></comment>


Backtick Macro Processor for Forth - <AUTHOR> https://rdrop-exit.github.io/backtick-macro-processor/ <comment><USER2> Nice to see more interest in Forths and concatenative languages lately on HN. IMO they're even more amenable to metaprogramming than Lisps, and there's a lot of power in a compositional, interactive style of programming, especially for a low-level language with no safety nets. I definitely recommend playing around with a Forth (I like Gforth) or Factor, and trying to absorb some of the philosophy—it's helped improve my program design in other languages.

<comment><USER3> Speaking of concatenative languages, Joy and K (and I suppose J) should get mentioned as well. Lots of wisdom to be drawn from those languages and the minds behind them, and especially interesting when examined in tandem with Lisps and various functional programming languages.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that K and J belong in that category of languages. While they both also welcome a point-free style of programming, an important characteristic of concatenative languages is that (almost) any sequence of tokens is a valid sub-program, making it very easy and natural to factor and compose programs from smaller programs.

In Forth, if you figure that a sequence of 5 tokens are used often, you don't consider what parameters are used and name them in a function definition. You rip those 5 tokens out verbatim into a word definition, which when called pulls them implicitly off the stack just as if the tokens were in-line.

<comment><USER3> You're absolutely right, thanks for correcting my mistake. I think my brain lazily threw them in there because I learned about them all around the same time. Also, I came across this fascinating directory of links a while back, some of which explore the overlap further: [http://nsl.com](http://nsl.com)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dear Zed, please throw the bikeshedders a bone - <AUTHOR> http://crazybear.posterous.com/dear-zed-please-throw-the-bikeshedders-a-bone

<comment><USER2> Is "educate your boss" no longer an option these days?

 _What if someone edits the sqlite file via sqlite rather than the config file?_

Think of the sqlite database as a "deployed" configuration, not the configuration that you work with. Put together some process documentation for deployment procedures, you'll need it anyway.

 _What if sqlite3 goes out of business? How will we edit the config files? Where can we purchase sqlite3 support?_

sqlite is public domain. And if the support issue can kill your proposal, you should be worrying about where to get mongrel2 support, in case Zed falls off a bike.

 _So now we can't even invoke the server, we need to invoke some complicated shell script? Sounds like a maintenance nightmare._

Congratulations, you've just introduced a fraction of the complexity in apachectl. Have a cookie.

 _Mongrel2 makes me feel fear, uncertainty and doubt! These are negative feelings!_

I don't know about your manager, but mine would definitely cringe with fear, uncertainty, and doubt upon seeing some scary temporary hexadecimal filename.

Oh, and since we're bikeshedding, might as well point out that Step 3 has a useless use of cat. Grumble, grumble.

<comment><AUTHOR> The more education your boss needs about a new technology, the less likely he is to allow it's use.

 _Think of the sqlite database as a "deployed" configuration, not the configuration that you work with. Put together some process documentation for deployment procedures, you'll need it anyway._

The list of objections your boss might raise were all straw men except for this one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1777093>

(I added a disclaimer to the post clarifying that I'm not endorsing any of these objections.)

As for a scary hexadecimal filename, that's an implementation detail. The raw text sqlite dump is the actual configuration, the /tmp/whatever.sqlite file is deleted when mongrel2 exits. No user need know it exists.

<comment><USER2> _The canonical version of the server configuration doesn't play nice with version control, and so staff has to work with a facsimile and hope that nobody makes out-of-process changes._

You claim that this is a _social_ problem, and I claim that the solution to the social problem is to have a well-defined process.

Even if the canonical configuration _is_ under version control, that still does not prevent anyone from making out-of-process changes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree with you.

Let me clarify: the social problem is that everyone is whining about how they are forced to know that config.sqlite exists. They even need to remember this while writing their "run_my_webapp.sh" script.

I'm proposing a command line option which hides the `m2sh load -config examples/config/sample.conf` step from the user, and stores the config.sqlite file somewhere other than the working directory.

The sole goal is to make people STFU about the config format.

<comment><USER3> Part of the idea behind mongrel2 and using sqlite is that there isn't supposed to be a canon config script/format thingy. Baking m2sh into mongrel2 so you can pass it in with a flag canonizes it.

I admit that right now it does seem to be the de facto standard but that's at least partly because the m2 community is small enough that Zed is still important in it so the tools he ships are the tools people use. In the event that m2 takes over the world though an -m2sh (or similar) option is going to be criticized as obsolete bloat that no one needs because every one uses the M2ConfigDeploy.py library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unless I'm remembering wrong, isn't one of the benefits of using sqlite in this context that you get configuration persistence, live configuration modification, and customizable configuration frontends? The suggested solution, loading a dump file into a temporary database during start up time, completely defeats the purpose of all of these. It may be difficult to convince PHBs to use this because it's "different than other tools", but really, PHBs are going to complain about arbitrary things like that anyway (the manager who complaints about this isn't the one who has to learn the difference between the lighttpd and apache config file formats, for example). These are good goals for _modern_ services to have.

Don't so it, Zed. The bikeshedders don't need a bone.

<comment><AUTHOR> To clarify, I wasn't proposing to eliminate any of this.

I was only proposing a command line option allowing the user to pretend this doesn't exist, if you want to make their mongrel2 configuration "ninja proof" (to borrow Zed's language).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> M2s zero mq awesomeness, for me, is balanced out by the need to recreate init scripts, config files, and other things that all my other apps use. I'm not opposed to zed replacing these, its just that I think this non web server related work belongs in separate projects. Having all these new things to learn and understand makes setting up m2 way more complicated than it needs to be.

<comment><USER6> You don't have to replace anything, there are config files. Look in examples/configs/ and you'll see examples of configs.

<comment><USER5> I went through the getting started guide two months ago and at the time it pointed new users towards m2sh and had no mention of config files. Did something change in your docs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Use "SQLite Database Browser" (<http://sqlitebrowser.sourceforge.net/>) (free) or the Firefox Add-On "SQLite Manager" (<https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/5817/>) (also free) to open sqlite3 files.

<comment><USER6> That add-on looks bad ass. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://mongrel2.org/tktnew> ?

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't see how your proposed solution affects either your first or second cases.

"What if someone edits the sqlite file via sqlite rather than the config file?" \- well, you've just introduced complexity by making them separate, and disparately maintained files. Previously, there _was_ no config file, and you didn't have this problem.

"What if sqlite3 goes out of business? How will we edit the config files? Where can we purchase sqlite3 support?" \- your proposed solution does not address this at all. You are still dependent upon sqlite3.

"So now we can't even invoke the server, we need to invoke some complicated shell script? Sounds like a maintenance nightmare." \- doesn't address this at all, and this argument is orthogonal to the other arguments anyway.

While you might be able to make the argument for preferring a config file to SQLite3 (which is an implementation detail), your solution badly hacks together a hydra of both. Go back to the drawing board :).

<comment><USER6> > Previously, there was no config file, and you didn't have this problem.

This is false, there is a config file. Look in examples/configs/ for examles of config files.

People really don't get this. There's a config file, and a config database. Just baffling why people ignore this repeatedly.

<comment><USER9> I apologise; I didn't realise there was a split.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This has to be one of the stupidest running complaints in recent memory. How is his proposal much different than the m2sh tool? [http://mongrel2.org/doc/tip/docs/manual/book.wiki#x1-220003....](http://mongrel2.org/doc/tip/docs/manual/book.wiki#x1-220003.2)

<comment><AUTHOR> The only real difference between this and m2sh is a social one. I agree, in addition to a `-dbtxt` option, one could also include a `-dbm2sh` option. I added to the post to reflect your suggestion.

I should also emphasize that I'm not proposing this for technical reasons. The sentence where I clarify this is now bold in the post.

<comment><USER11> In this case Zed made a design decision to have a common target format for the config (which I personally applaud).

Doing what you propose would only bring extra clutter to those who do not have the social problem that you propose to solve with the technology.

Explain the hypothetical boss it is a bit like an ELF format, but for configuration. He does not recompile every executable every time before running it, does he ?

Also, this is not the first time this design decision has been made - as a well-known example you can bring up Chrome and Firefox.

One thing where your suggestion does make sense is where one has to frequently re-edit the config file and restart the server. But that is solved by writing the shell scripts, not by cluttering the core code base, IMHO.

<comment><USER6> > Explain the hypothetical boss it is a bit like an ELF format, but for > configuration. He does not recompile every executable every time before > running it, does he?

That's a good point. Mongrel2 config _files_ == .c files, m2sh == make, config.sqlite == libmycodez.so

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is number ONE on hacker news? Way to go seriously down hill guys.

The only reason I can imagine anyone cares about mongrel2 is that it's written by a 'celeb'. Do we really need endless posts about this? It's a webserver. There's millions of webservers. It's a solved problem.

<comment><USER13> Mongrel2 may be enjoying some popularity because Zed wrote it, but Zed isn't a celebrity for no reason. Mongrel was a pretty damn good idea. He's also written interesting articles on his design decisions to come this far, and explained himself quite thoroughly. I think a lot of the HN community is eager to see where this goes.

Nothing is a solved problem in this industry. Look at the way the web has changed in the last 5 years. I think it's time to take a good hard look at what we use webservers for, and admit that Apache doesn't support a lot of common use cases very well.</comment></comment>


Why are clients shocked by the price for web development? - <AUTHOR> In my experience as a web developer for the past year, it seems that many clients are shocked by the price for a website where they want specific functionality created just for their business. Why is this? <comment><USER2> Because a wordpress[1] site with a $20 template is all most small businesses need for their brochureware site.

The average small business needs a website with their hours, phone number, some pictures, and maybe a blog that they'll never actually update, but they don't really know the difference between paying someone to set up wordpress and paying someone to build a bespoke web application.

The only reason the majority of small businesses think they need custom functionality is because they don't know enough to know what they're really trying to do. Try to listen to _what_ the client wants to accomplish, not _how_ they want to accomplish it, and see if you can come up with an off the shelf solution to their problems (or refer them to someone else who can).

Think about all those times someone on stackoverflow asks how to do something in a really roundabout way that seems wrong. The first question you ask is "what are you trying to accomplish?" Most of the time there is a simpler way to do it.

Edit:

[1] When I say wordpress, I mean wordpress/drupal/cushycms not just wordpress. Basically anything where you're not charging the client to build a custom blog/CMS engine, or charging $2k for a custom design.

<comment><USER3> I cut my teeth building wordpress/drupal brochure sites for small businesses. I have inherited custom web sites for these customers who got duped by some punk developer who didn't feel like using an established solution.

I want to punch all developers in the mouth who think a custom application for this type of situation is a good idea. They give us all a bad name and exacerbate the cost problem.

<comment><USER4> I want to smack all the developers and designers who think Wordpress is "good enough". It's not. It's an unmaintainable mess. Every client-run Wordpress site I touch is disgustingly out of date and everything added since the first design looks like crayon drawings done by five-year olds with ADD. I don't see much Drupal in the wild so I can't comment on that.

Web development has not reached the state where non-technical end users can maintain websites. In theory, sure, in practice, there's tons of money to be made fixing hacked sites and cleaning up years of technical debt.

I would not recommend Wordpress for anything other than a simple blog. Do _anything_ else with it, you need a developer on staff. And a simple blog will never be enough for the needs of a small business.

I'd much rather work on some 90s-era custom-built app than the vast majority of brutally hacked together Wordpress sites.

<comment><USER5> WordPress is excellent, and there are some mighty big WP sites out there. You're barking up the right tree when you say "you need a developer on staff" though. Web sites are not just "set and forget" deals. They need continuing care and maintenance. And the whole idea of having a site that the receptionist can take care of on a Friday afternoon, which I have found pervasive in small businesses, has just never really worked at all.

<comment><USER4> Wordpress sucks for small business. It's just that simple. It shouldn't, but it does.

<comment><USER6> Small business needs an easy CMS whereby staff can do most of the tasks without present "IT Crowd". AFAIK WordPress gets it done (with some minor problems - as you wrote fe. updating is a problem for non-technical people and WordPress haves no MVC, so it`s easy to go spaghetti way with the code). WordPress devs are trying to resolve problems which are most voted within the community.

<comment><USER4> They're not minor problems. Please don't underestimate the epidemic of hacked sites that are a direct result of end-user unwillingness to upgrade and possibly break their site. This is a problem that can't be solved without significant architectural changes. Customers are more willing to risk getting their websites pwned than to risk an upgrade that may take their site down, so upgrades often aren't done for years.

It's not a small problem, its a huge one, and the primary reason why I can no longer recommend Wordpress.

<comment><USER6> I agree with "Security is a process, not a product." AFAIK security is important for WordPress team. There is a lot of good documentation on a project site and there are some materials from WordCamps (fe. <http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress>)

Latest WP "hack" via botnets was because of weak logins and passwords which are set by the users. Can you blame WP devs for that?

Speaking about upgrading; making updates easier it`s also one of the goals of the project. Also it isn`t that hard when you develop WP sites using information from WordPress Codex docs.

I hope it will get better with time, and as i wrote people are working to get things better. Sorry to hear that you are not going to recommend WordPress any longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it's partly because of blurry line between software products and programming services.

Many of the software products, proprietary or open source offer massive functionality for very low cost but this is of course because the development costs have been aggregated across many customers.

For example , I was asked to build an online customer management system for someone on a budget. So I googled around for open source solutions to the problem , found a few that fitted their requirements and showed them to the client.

Once they found one they liked, I FTPd the PHP upto their server, setup mysql and did the basic configuration for them. I then pointed them to the URL for the system, gave them some basic instruction and charged them $25 for the hour.

They were over the moon with that, since it was so quick and cheap.

Of course later they come back and say "hmm, this system is good but I wish there was an extra field here that did this and this part should work slightly differently".

So I said "hmm, ok. This is probably 5 hours work so except to pay around $125". At which point they said "What?! This is just a few small changes, how come the price is so much higher?! The system is open source, so you can just make these changes easily". This then puts you on the defensive as you have to justify that in fact to do these changes will involve reading a ton of someone elses code , finding the correct places to change things and testing that everything won't break.

Now , if they had paid $1000 for the original system (probably a fair price for the amount of actual functionality it enabled for them) then the $125 would look more reasonable.

The amount of value that they gained for the $25 was so high that you have their expectations have been set unreasonably high.

<comment><USER8> Just so you know, semiskilled housecleaners charge a lot more than $25 an hour. Car mechanics $60-$120 an hour. Plumbers $80-$120 an hour. When you charge $25 total for a trip to his facility, the time to understand his business problem, and an hour of setting up software for him, you are telling the client "I have no skills and am not worthy of any respect. Please abuse me."

<comment><USER7> Well I didn't have to go onsite for this, or I would have definitely charged more. Though I would say that installing PHP scripts to web hosts is closer to semi-skilled labour since it can be (and frequently is) done by teenagers.

Plumbing or mechanicing have a higher barrier to entry since you usually need certifications and a significant outlay for tools/transport/premesis etc.

<comment><USER9> You'd be much better off basing your billing rate on the _value_ that you're providing to the customer, rather than the cost/time that it takes you. This is a very basic business skill, but it's not always apparent to those of us who just like to build things, whether we get paid or not.

Try to get comfortable with the idea that you deserve to be paid very well for your work. (It's something I've had to do.) In my case, it was very uncomfortable to send that first message with my new higher rate. But I spelled out the value of the work I was proposing (which had obvious benefit for the client, but also bolstered my own mental fortitude), and the client happily agreed. And now the client is "educated" as to what this type of thing is actually worth. :)

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Clients are ignorant - can't really fault them for it since it's not their domain.

I've found it's best to let the ones who balk at the true cost walk away. They will go find some cheap service to build what they want ("oh, can you make it like facebook?"). They will spend 3x as much as you quoted by the end of it, but they will learn to pay attention when a developer tells them how much it will cost.

The second project they ask you to work on to fix the disaster of the first will be a lot nicer.

Whatever you do, do NOT underbid, ever. I made that mistake a couple times and it turned into nearly a year of bitter burnout. Hard to like what you do when you are getting paid about 20% of what you should be due to invoice battles.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is an extremely complicated question. I run a UI/UX studio here in Toronto and we go all up and down the spectrum, with some clients being shocked at our prices for web design/development but we've also lost jobs from other prospective clients because our prices were too low (no joke).

It depends on two things:

      1. Where you get your business

      2. Who your competition is

For many, #2 depends on #1. We see three main sources of business: Google (we rank highly for 'Toronto web design'), Dribbble (we have the 2nd most followers in Toronto, and 8th in Canada), and of course, referrals.

Dribbble leaves us with clients with the biggest budgets, who aren't afraid of 5-figure prices for web design. This is where we're competing with other high- end designers and thus our prices are more in-line with theirs.

Referrals are the strongest leads, with clients who when they don't have larger budgets are more comfortable stretching a bit because of our strong work for a friend or mutual acquaintance (and we're often happy to mark down a bit for a referral).

Leads from Google are where the clients who get really shocked come in; they don't really understand or appreciate the work that needs to go into good, iterative, considered UI/UX (and the custom development that goes along with it). The competition here includes a swath of companies who game SEO and outsource work offshore, and they can charge considerably less. Thus, our prices look unreasonably higher to the untrained eye.

There's also a phenomenon where cheaper clients expect _more_. If you move up in terms of positioning yourself as premium, better clients will consider you and your services-- the types of clients who aren't shocked by "high prices" for design and/or development.

So, if you find all of your clients are shocked at your prices, you're not marketing towards the right clients.

I would also highly recommend listening to patio11's podcast #3 about making more as a consultant: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/10/10/kalzumeus- podcast-3-grow...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/10/10/kalzumeus- podcast-3-growing-consulting-practices-with-brennan-dunn/), and charging more [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and- patrick-...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-patrick- mckenzie-on-why-your-customers-would-be-happier-if-you-charged-more/)

<comment><USER11> Great comment.

I'am a self entrepreneur and I do some web designing from time to time. I recently got a lead for a organization which had EU funding of 250'000€. They wanted me to roll two sites with independent designs and features which's content had to be editable. I offered them my full consultation in choosing everything from ground up, but they kept on asking for the price. Once I told them I never heard anything back.

I offered to do the sites for about 0.5% stake of what they got from EU, but they apparently thought it was too much.

Recently a friend of mine was observing me coding and he was astonished of the complexity of it. As he said, 'For me, a button has always been just a button with no further functionality.' I also let him to change the source code as he was interested to see what effects it has on the program. He deleted a single bracket and was amazed to find that the program failed to run. I then continued to tell him that no matter how big your codebase is, a single mistake such as that might screw it all.

He now understands my frustration better.

<comment><USER12> well, maybe that ~1000€ were far to low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd strongly suspect you're working with smaller to mid-sized businesses — or maybe just individuals.

I've done a _ton_ of work for smaller outfits, and the fact is that whatever you're billing is coming directly out of their own wallet, or close to it. Imagine the shock when the mechanic says you need to spend $2,500 on a new transmission. That's what your clients feel.

That's also why I've turned away smaller projects for the past year. Everything becomes a never-ending, underpaying project from hell where you end up doing little tweaks for free because you're a nice guy/gal. You also end up competing with joker developers with lower rates who will probably do a hack job (the fight of "doing it cheap" vs "doing it right" is timeless on the small business front).

My point: If your clients are shocked and opting not to do work with you, find bigger clients. If bigger clients won't work with you, lower your rate and find smaller clients.

<comment><USER6> @katzgrau I also agree with that opinion. I think it could be extrapolated to making sth for money in general.

<comment><USER13> True, but I've also noticed that large companies, where budgets are involved and the mentality of "it's not my money" prevails, rate never really matters.

Even if they fight back at first, they typically give in, because quality is more important than expense (since everyone wants to cover their arse).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can't think of another good or service with this much variety in price or opacity in what you get. For small projects, you're talking free or $10ish for an open CMS + theme to maybe $10K for custom stuff. That's a 1000x difference (and maybe little discernable difference to the client).

If you want a car, you're paying in the thousands for a used one, in the tens for a new one, maybe hundreds if you really, really want a nice one. 10-100x, and there is no "free" entry point here.

Similarly with a house, it's pretty clear why house one costs more than house two. Using apartments in Manhattan as an example, you're looking 250K for a studio up to maybe 12.5M for a penthouse. 50x with a very clear reason.

<comment><USER15> This is the best answer I've seen. It's impossible for non-technical people to see the difference between a custom website where you wrote ever character of the HTML/CSS/Whatever by hand and a Wordpress.com website with a beautiful theme for $20. Even more so, it's hard for them to see that once you want to add a single feature or two that don't fit the Wordpress mold, you're likely to have to go from-scratch for the entire website and charge 100x what they were previously paying.

<comment><USER16> Indeed. Any idea about how to _explain_ to non-technical people what this difference is? This is the kind of question I'd like answered.

(Otoh, concerning WP, you can, unfortunately, fit almost anything into the WP mold, or "around" it - at least when you are past the point of having read and understood most of its source code and you know the db layout by heart... yeah, it's terrible and the whole thing works against you if you want to write good, clean, testable code, but it still ends up the cheapest option you can give to a client if you want to be honest with him)

<comment><USER17> If you want a road-worthy production car, expect to pay on the order of $10,000.

If you want a road-worthy production car with design or features that none of the extant manufacturers have seen fit to build, expect to pay on the order of $1 billion.

The overall prices are higher, but the difference in cost is similar, and the principle basically the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's because most people don't have a point of reference for web development costs, and their experience with web products is with applications that have been around for a couple years with millions (or tens or hundreds of millions) of dollars of development time put into them. Facebook, Twitter, Square, Basecamp, etc.

When someone walks into a $5 million dollar home they instantly know it's an expensive home not because they're aware of the materials and craft that went into building the house. It's because they have a point of reference, their home, for what something costs and they're able to extrapolate an approximate cost for something far more expensive.

People don't have this point of reference for web development because most people haven't ever hired someone to build a web app for them before, and most people have never tried to build a web app on their own.

A tip: Ask people for a few sites that they like and that they use. Take a look at them and approximate how much time it would take you and your team to get that application built from scratch.

Then say - okay to build an approximate version of X, you'd probably be looking at a team of 3-4 people (or 6-8, etc.) working full time for X months.

So that site likely would cost around X dollars for you to build.

The point isn't to get them to understand our craft and the effort involved.

This exercise helps give them a point of reference for how much the things they use every day cost, and from there they can start being realistic about what they can get within their budget.

</comment><comment><USER19> Because most client can't tell a wordpress installation with a theme from ThemeForest from a ground up build up. Most actually need the former, but sound like needing the latter.

</comment><comment><USER20> Because web development is easy. Why would I pay so much when you sit on the computer for a few hours pressing buttons. It requires nowhere near as much skill as say.. A builder. /s

<comment><USER21> Are you kidding? Web development is not just "pressing buttons". Get back to your Joomla or Wordpress site and think again before you post.

<comment><USER20> Maybe I was too optimistic in people's ability to notice blatant sarcasm haha

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> People don't have any clue about what's involved. They maybe have had some printwork done on the cheap before, and see this as similar.

And when I say they don't have a clue about what's involved you need to remember that many people can't plug in a printer. They have no idea about 300 dpi or 75 dpi or low quality jpegs or cross browser ("I click 'the internet' and there it is") or HTML or CSS or anything else.

But this is perhaps an opportunity! (A painful opportunity that's possibly full of woe, but still).

You create 5 mini sites of varying levels of complexity. You start with totally passive, html & css only, no updates, few images. You then build up, including tiny bits of dynamic content (roll-overs, javascript) all the way up to full content management. You describe how many hours of work are needed to create each of these, you show examples of wireframes. You also describe the design decisions the client would need to make ("Will your content change once a year? Your best choice is X But if you will add content once a week your best choice is Y").

You then give tentative costings. You make sure they're labeled as tentative and subject to change because of work involved.

You invite potential customers to talk to you about what they need.

Hopefully this will filter out people who have wildly wrong ideas about the costs or times, and will encourage people who want a website but who were too baffled to ask.

Of course, there are many risks of dealing with totally naive clients and it could be hellish.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you present it as a commodity, they will treat it as such. "A website" is a thing. "A tailored solution to help your business do X" is not.

<comment><USER24> I remember early on in my web development career to make sure you are selling a service not a product. You aern't building a website - you are providing a marketing service, requiring expert advice and a component of that service is building a website. As people have said, websites are easy - Wordpress + theme + hour of time and you are done.

Sell your knowledge of digital marketing - SEO, Adwords, etc in order to drive sales for your client, which is ultimately the reason they want a website in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Just to throw in my 10 cents, if I've learned one thing in my own web dev consulting, it is...

WORK FOR PEOPLE WITH MONEY. LOTS OF IT.

It makes all the difference in the world.

</comment><comment><USER26> Essentially, you're shocking your client with price because you haven't adequately explored and quantified the value of the benefits you're providing to their business.

Anytime you are building a web application, you are actually solving a business problem for your client. For example, that problem may be more driving sales or reducing staff time spend on a particular task.

You need to spend time diving into this with them to figure out what your project is really about. Then you can ask targeted questions to the client. For example:

"So, right now you're telling me that Jan and Ella are spending 20 hours a week processing the proposals. If we could reduce that to 5 hours per week, how much would that save you?"

"If we could improve the conversion rate on your flagship product by 10%, how much would that be worth annually in new revenue"

Once you've asked some questions like this, you can then position your price relative to these other values that the client has affirmed for you.

All of a sudden, it makes it much harder for them to feign shock at paying $25k for a system which increases revenue by $250k in the first year.

If you're not working with clients who have valuable problems to solve, find clients who do.

</comment><comment><USER27> Consider that dissonance: a website is a magic black box from the outside.

That will work to your advantage, you can skip the technical details and make it as efficient as possible. This means you should focus on selling the site as a solution to a business problem. Working out what that is, is the hard part. Many times the client has no idea and no goals.

Another advantage is the visual nature of the web. Details of what a site actually _does_ are mostly visual elements. This means the Designer and Coder will be one in the eyes of the client, if the coder exists at all. I recently learned this lesson the hard way: I as a developer, brought on a designer friend to help with a contract. Introduced them to the client and we put in a bid. Soon, a design firm came in and took the contract, selling a design and insisting on bundling all development.

My mistake was the disconnection between designer and developer. The client doesn't know or care. Bad client? Maybe, but it seems like a common theme to me.

</comment><comment><USER28> Isn't this the simplest thing if you want a no-fuss brochureware site?

* Go to Wordpress.com

* Choose a custom address ($18.00 / year for youraddress.com)

* Pick a pleasant theme

* Type in your content

Job done, right?

</comment><comment><USER29> I wrote my own CMS that can do a few things really well and was marketing it. Found a client and I'd been charging a client a few South African Rand every month to host a website for their business. Really low cost, in my error.

Then i started getting asked to do more work on the site.

Then they wanted a site design and they were complaining they needed more business from the site so I didnt charge. I went out of my way to redo their design, meet with them, find the correct demasque background, logo redesign and content updates.

Then another small site I was running for them at a lower cost suddenly needed changes. So I barked a bit and they backed off.

Then they came back and said that on the first website they needed more business because another channel was failing them. someone had suggested they setup a blog to get new clients. Would I help?

I replied back and said for the monthly fee I was being paid i couldnt support more work or blog integration, not at that rate. We could discuss a retainer for that kind of work...

They turfed me on both websites - Gone to someone cheaper they say that also allows them to update the website as they choose and setup a blog.. So can I give them a backup of the sites? Sure cuz it was in my terms of service.

So I thought I was doing them a favour- low costs, possibility of self maintaining the site, a new theme design, managed hosting and email.

Turfed. My wife is pissed at the time I put into them.

I on the other hand have realized this - 1\. Small business dont want to pay a lot of money for anything 2\. Small business dont want to pay anything for services. If you ask for payment they will balk and possibly not enter an engagement 3\. Small business will want everything done, plus the clothes off your back. And when you cant anymore they'll say you suck and move on.

Im now not even marketing the web dev side of my skills anymore.

</comment><comment><USER30> I've found that most of the confusion comes from a mis-understanding of the service that is being provided.

My clients understand they're not buying a blog, or an e-commerce shopping cart, or a newsletter system, or {insert some feature here}. Rather, they're paying for my time and expertise -- and to provide that in context of what they want.

Any time I've encountered a customer who has sticker shock, I've always focused on making sure they knew what they were buying. More often than not, that always made customers much more comfortable. And, in a few cases, I explained that they should look for someone to provide their requested service at a lower cost. (Surprisingly, several customers freaked out and then pleaded with me to take their project. Go figure.)

</comment><comment><USER6> @rbsn I don`t know how much do you charge hourly, but i`ll assume that it`s fair price for a job done. If it is so, maybe your clients are cheapskates? There is a trend in thinking (especially within small business owners or managers) that good "website" is easy to make and there is a lot of people who can do it. I would agree with the second, but not the first. Usually after one or two bigger failed projects wise firms learn price to quality ratio. There rest are cheapskates that must be avoided ;)

</comment><comment><USER31> Because they thought web development is just hacking together html and css; and you dont need any logic but just sitting down and hacking it away! To be honest, I used to have that mindset until I got a front end developer job. It is a nightmare to get pixel perfect style on every single browsers and devices. Not to mention, when we do a simple google search we can see so much websites and people offering to do "web developing" for such a low cost.

</comment><comment><USER32> Even more amazing is when you aren't dealing with a client (who is by definition clueless) but a manager (who really should know what it is that he is managing).

Ex : "This client's site is all fucked up. A simple upgrade isn't possible because it was written 3 version back and the formats for everything changed. Rewrite it from scratch using this hideously complex tool which you've never touched before. It'll take you only 40 hours, right?".

</comment><comment><USER33> Because you're talking to inexperienced clients! So if your client owns a small store and wants a site like amazon.com that client will have sticker shock pretty quickly. On the other hand if your client is an IT manager who is looking for a specific widget that client will have a very good idea what things cost. In fact that IT manager may even assume that costs will go higher than your estimate.

</comment><comment><USER34> I was looking for a company to build a website for me in the UK the prices were not realistic like $1000 a day and most of them needed a 50 working days to build version 1.

As a business owner I know it will cost money but not in this rate. Now I am in Morocco with a great team, they are working 12 hours a day to finish this project for much much cheaper cost same quality. ++ Marrakesh weather is a bonus.

</comment><comment><USER35> A good chunk of my core business is web development and have been doing this for quite some time now. There are many factors that go into the buyers decision making process.

A large part of that is perception. Most buyers do not see websites as a high ticket items. Many see it as either just another business expense they have to make or they do not think it's worth investing into because it will not give them much of a return on their investment.

If your clients are shocked by the prices you give them, then there is miscommunication between your value & message and what they think their are getting. It's all about managing expectations.

When talking with the prospect about their future goals, and they mention they just need a website that (and I quote from a client here): "is very simple and just lists my name, my companies name and an address." That is NOT a client who will pay any sort of real money for a website. That type of client is best lead to the $10 website services. ... at least for me. I do not want to be dealing with such a low end client.

Though, one follow-up to such a client request that I've used to great success is:

Me: Just to make sure I'm understanding your correctly, you're looking for a ultra simple website that is essentially a business card but online right?

most of the time they will answer:

Them: Well, no not a business card. I'd want to be able to put some article on there, pictures, and there really should be a way for people to contact me through the site.

Me: Ah, so it's not something so 'simple' is it? Let's talk about what your business goals are. Where do you see your company being in 3 months? 6 months? 1 yr? Do you know to use the website at all for any sort of lead generation, information gathering and in-bound marketing?

At this point, they will usually start realizing that there is a lot of high value items to do done. Their needs and actual budget will now dictate which you and they will be able to take.

If you're unsure of what they can afford, you can always say something like:

"A project like this usually start around $15,000. Do you have a budjet allocated for a project like this? .... No? Ok, what do you believe it is worth and there are ways we can reduce this price by removing some items of value, so what value would you like to remove so that we can fit it into your budget?"

</comment><comment><USER36> Because non-technical people have no idea what you do. If I were to freelance or do web development I would position myself on the high end, and only target those customers. When you have customers that appreciate your work and don't think price is an issue, then you have the choice to choose who you want to work with.

ie. Raise your rates! :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Why they're shocked isn't worth getting into really at first: The first question is, are they even able to get that sort of budget together. Then the second question is, what sorts of things are available for budgets they can muster up, and what are the constraints on said things.

</comment><comment><USER12> perhaps it is an overlap of several psychological phenomena.

1) from the look wise, a webservice indistinguishable from a page in a magazine.

2) functionality is a button, slider, or an input field, the result in the normal case, a table and often it is even for experts difficult to see the effort behind.

3) the construction of a car / bridge etc. is still somewhat understandable for outsiders, materials such as work processes are visible and understandable, programming is different here, people that never dealt with it can not see the difference between static html and data from a e.g. graph db.

4) the real effort have computers or was it servers?

</comment><comment><USER38> Because they have no experience working with developers, nor respect for the skill. But when they find out you make more money than they do, they start to wonder if they maybe got into the wrong business.

</comment><comment><USER39> History. There was a time when web sites where not dynamic and build with WYSIWYG editors, this "type" of creating still exists and gets lumped in with everything else due to sheer ignorance.

</comment><comment><USER40> <irony> because web developers are not real programmers/developers </irony>

No but most of the time, clients compare it to the css theme a 15year old did for their wordpress install.

</comment><comment> artumi-richard Aren't we all shocked by the prices of things occasionally. Don't we sometimes think a thing should be cheaper than it is, especially when it's a new thing to us.

</comment><comment><USER41> Because of lack of knowledge about software development and how complex it is.

They usually associate complex work with physical products (laptops, phones, cars .. )

<comment><AUTHOR> So how can we get across that it is that much more complex than many people think? I considered explaining that it is like asking an interior designer to design your kitchen, or any other room in your house so that it is completely unique to you and that you're not buying Ikea flat pack furniture and putting it sporadically around your house.

<comment><USER3> Prototypical freelance gig: please use Ikea furniture, our budget is not large. Just change the height of that table from 3ft to 2.75ft. Also, please make it fit in this room that's too small for it. Stack this Ikea couch on top of it, but leave room for another chair that my uncle built in the 80s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> What are you quoting them? If it's too high they might be right to be shocked.

</comment><comment><USER43> Because those stupid 1&1 adverts where you get a custom site for like £10

<comment><USER44> Yes, but an awful lot of small businesses (plumber, dog walker, restaurant, transmission shop, barber, etc) just need a basic brochure-ware site with some text, a few photos, an address, phone number and hours and maybe a contact form or hosted email. 1&1, Wix, Webs, Weebly, Wordpress.com, GoDaddy, Homestead/Intuit, Vistaprint, and probably 100 other places offer that DIY/lightly configured site offering. If that's the thing your (non-)client needs, why should they pay 100x that for something no functionally better for them? They don't want a website. They want more revenue, and they want their customers to be able to find, learn about, and choose them; a website is just a means to that end...

Disclaimer: I work for Vistaprint, who also owns Webs, and I always speak only for myself on news.yc, never for my employer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> craigslist.

</comment><comment><USER46> Aparajayah is providing best Web Development Services, Software Development, Opensource development and Cms Development Services with latest industrial standards.

<http://www.aparajayah.com/web_development>

<comment><USER47> HackerNews: Step 1: Contribute to conversation Step 2: Link to your own business as an example.

I think you forgot step 1</comment></comment>


1M Revenue, 0 Employees with an Amazon FBA While Traveling the World - <AUTHOR> https://dollarsanity.com/amazon-fba-selling-my-products/ <comment><USER2> So he openly admits selling a $3 pair of glasses for $65 (now ~$28 on the site), and use Fiverr to buy fake reviews... not sure if this post will accomplish anything good. Unless the whole revenue story is bust and this is a desperate, shameless attempt at generating traffic.

<comment><USER3> Yeah this guy should be considered a scam artist and seems damn good at it.

<comment><USER4> Arent most (similar) companies scam artists at some level? What percentage of markup is considered not a scam?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Perhaps the biggest issue for me personally was not providing people with real value, something I now take pride in."

Really.

<comment><USER6> Given the apparent admission of Amazon-related fraud in the form of purchased counterfeit reviews, I'd take their word for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very candid and detailed description on how to become a modern-day hustle-porn con artist.

</comment><comment><USER8>
      Naturally, there were a couple of loose ends I had yet to
      take care of, including:

      * Taxes

So he still owes taxes...

</comment><comment><USER9> Some interesting pieces in this article, but also a lot of cringe. It also seemed to be 3x longer than necessary.

</comment><comment><USER10> The older I get, the more I have come to realize how little contentment one can gain in life by being a rent-seeker.

<comment><USER11> Maybe, but it's a lot less stressful seeking contentment if one does not have to worry about the day to day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lots of seemingly unfiltered advice. Glad it was written up, not sure what larger lessons I should take away.</comment>


Evernote limits free tier to two devices, raises prices 40% - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/06/evernote-limits-free-tier-to-two-devices-raises-prices-40/ <comment><USER2> I hope this works out for them. I fear though that they may have lost their way. Sometimes when you squeeze really hard on a user base like this, when you've been losing users and not listening to the people who were paying you money to begin with, it just hastens the end.

One way they could have avoided this would have been a native Linux client. One Note was always going to eventually catch up with their features, but it probably wouldn't go over to Linux (although with the new Microsoft it is actually gone from unthinkable to unlikely.)</comment>


X265 3.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/multicoreware/x265/src/46b84ff665fd301e384328972d3d1312a8c74599/doc/reST/releasenotes.rst?at=default&fileviewer=file-view-default <comment><USER2> Having spent time reading the standards recently (and implementing some toy decoders) I've noticed a pattern in video codec designs, starting from the very first one:

        H.261 - simple, not much more than MJPEG with P-frames.
        MPEG-1 - basically '261 with B-frames, pretty simple
        MPEG-2/H.262 - MPEG-1 with more complex interlacing stuff
        H.263 - no more interlacing, better low-bitrate performance
        MPEG-4 - absurd complexity that no one turned out to use most of anyway (3D scenes, face animation(!?), etc.)
        H.264 - back to regular video, with better I prediction
        H.265 - complex again?

Of course they do get more complex over time, but it seems like a cycle that alternates between incremental-yet-significant changes and huge redesigns that don't seem quite worth it.

<comment><USER3> Yes they are all built on top of previous innovation and work. So it is a long evolution in terms of video codec. And there is H.266 coming in 2020.

<comment><USER4> It is an evolution, but technological evolution doesn't necessarily follow an exponential curve. It took many years for H.264 and it looks like many more for H.266. The next version may take even longer. Innovation is slowing, and it has pretty profound effects for a variety of industrial sectors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Must say I'm massively surprised at how low adoption of 265/hevc is in ahem the eyepatch wearing part of the internet.

<comment><USER6> It's only recently been possible to actually use x265 for transparent encodes, previous versions of x265 removed film grain/digital noice to such a degree that the quality was worse than x264 at equivalent bitrates. Combine that with the massively increased costs in both encoding/decoding time (and worse x265 encoding tools/knowledge), x265 simply wasn't worthwhile except for crappy re- encodes at super low bitrates for people with crappy internet.

Recently you've begun to see a lot of x265 releases though, usually with HDR, the only significant feature x264 can't provide.

For sub-4K SDR content there's really no incentive for pirates to switch to x265, it's just a nuisance. With torrenting people don't pay for the extra bitrate x264 requires, unlike hosting services like Netflix, the ~20% bitrate savings of x265 are not important at all, especially compared to the other "costs" of compatibility issues and 10X longer encode times.

<comment><USER7> It's actually closer to 50% unless you are using hardware assisted encodes which aren't great currently... though I haven't tried on an RTX card yet, which is supposed to be better. So it does come down to time though.

<comment><USER8> Anecdotal evidence. But doing H.264 to HEVC encodes on my GTX 1080 result in significantly smaller files than Blu Ray rips

I purchased the X-Files Blu Ray Box Set. Ripping it all to my hard disk resulted in roughly 1.7 terabytes of footage

Encoding them with a likely higher than needed bitrate to preserve quality shrank them to a much more palatable 237GB (with subtitles) [https://i.imgur.com/eJFuxaV.png](https://i.imgur.com/eJFuxaV.png)

Bar removing the film grain (which I prefer, but not everyone does) I think the quality looks absolutely spectacular [https://i.imgur.com/xlWJEol.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/xlWJEol.jpg)

<comment><USER9> The image you linked to exhibits _horrible_ artifacts - but then again, you saved the screencap as a JPEG then uploaded it to a service that likely further butchers the image.

<comment><USER8> It looks like VLC at saved it as a 1.5 meg PNG, then Imgur chewed it up and spat out a JPEG, irritating

Here's a shot from a discussion a few weeks ago on HN I took of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It seems to have survived Imgur-ification much better

[https://i.imgur.com/VklppOK.png](https://i.imgur.com/VklppOK.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if there is an article that compares X265 and [https://github.com/intel/SVT-HEVC](https://github.com/intel/SVT-HEVC) (in terms of speed, feature set, required hardware, software license, etc..) ?

<comment><USER11> The best I've seen is [https://twitter.com/fg118942/status/1092045469981671424](https://twitter.com/fg118942/status/1092045469981671424)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can't wait for fast AV1 encoders, and especially hardware support.

</comment><comment><USER13> From completely personal opinion and that of close friends:

x265 movies look way cleaner while having way smaller file sizes.

Also it's the best tradeoff between quality/filesize by factor of 2 or more. I'd personally notice artifacts in x264 movies unless they were over 7gb in size. With x265 i'll grab a 3gb version of a movie in a heartbeat (well a few heartbeats on gigabit fiber :) and not worry about picture quality at all.

at 15gigs or more for a 1080p movie x264 is pretty much perfect, unless you really want to see the film-grain.

<comment><USER14> I'm re-coding all my drone footage from H.264 (hardware encoders on the drone) to x264. It's about 1/4th size with the same visual quality, so it's win-win

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> x265 HEVC Encoder

</comment><comment><USER16> Great to see Dolby Vision in the features there - I've been very impressed with it vs HDR10.

</comment><comment><USER17> Why not admit AV1 is all around better and work on it instead

<comment><USER18> In the end AV1 will likely have about the same level of adoption as VP9 ... pretty much googe/youtube only. Allowing Google to monopolize video standards is not something that the hardware world is going to accept. HEVC already has near universal hardware support. Why bother with supporting AV1?

<comment><USER19> It's not just YouTube. Netflix uses VP9:

[https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile- en...](https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile-encodes-for- netflix-downloads-625d7b082909)

[https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/performance- comparison-o...](https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/performance-comparison- of-video-coding-standards-an-adaptive-streaming-perspective-d45d0183ca95)

Twitch uses VP9:

[https://blog.twitch.tv/how-does-vp9-deliver-value-for- twitch...](https://blog.twitch.tv/how-does-vp9-deliver-value-for-twitchs- esports-live-streaming-35db26f6322f)

Both Twitch and Netflix will use AV1 in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Am I the only one who came to TFA looking for a screaming ThinkPad with a 7-row keyboard? _< snaps fingers>_

(downvotes—rly? That really was my first thought when I saw the title ...)</comment>